Be there, Losers!

Emilia Javanica performs the male nude

Kath Weider-Roos is the Creative Arts Producer at A&D. She snaps photos and asks questions.

So this old guy, Buoj iz Jeb, shows up at the All Student Exhibition last Friday night. Silly me, I thought his name was Indonesian or something. Turns out it's perfect gibberish of the sort that Buoj iz Jeb spoke when he first arrived on the scene during Emilia Javanica's undergraduate career. (She is now a graduate student at A&D.)

He has come out of hiding, apparently, this time speaking perfect English, and with a sudden and irrepressible urge to pose as a nude model, despite his lumpy and flaccid body.

During the opening, Buoj iz Jeb posed for the public in the front window of the gallery who were invited to try out their figurative drawing skills on Buoj's various Adonis-like poses.

On everyone's mind was or was not, of course, his peculiar penis made up of stuffed translucent women's stockings, golf balls for testicles (to give them some weight), and pubic hair fashioned out of steel wool. One of the undergrads who was there admitted, "oh yeah, in drawing class everyone always skips the penis. We go to great lengths to avoid looking at it..."

Emilia, the woman behind the man, told me that this was one of her main interests: to see how people would react and how Buoj iz Jeb would behave in an interactive situation. "One person asked him if he was in 'Nam, another one asked how long he'd been a professional model. He has a great sense of humor so he made a lot of jokes that he thought were funny."

"As people walked in the door, it was so interesting to see what they did. Some people actually saw me, turned around and walked out," she told me.

November 19th, the day of the opening, also happened to be "International Make Someone Uncomfortable Day," so really it couldn't have worked out more perfectly.